Online Distribution?

I have a suggestion that might make rFactor 2 a bit more popular.

Have the ISI guys ever considered publishing rFactor 2 on Steam or Impulse? Or better yet, both.

Both distribution has their own specific audience and both get a lot of attention at times. Steam distributes mainstream games and is the mainstream platform for PC gamers while Impulse is more on the indie side where even RPG Maker games can get distributed.

I suggest, if rF2 were to have a wider audience, it might be cool to see it on both Steam and on Impulse. I use both equally but Steam is more overall popular so Steam might be the best.

I just think it's sad to see Need for Speed: Shift be distributed on these two platforms and yet rFactor 2 isn't there to combat it. Would be nice to see it be more popular than NFS:S

Cheers,

Lizard

 

I doubt sim racing games will ever be more populair then mainstream arcade games though. And that might just be a good thing. (well for us, maybe not the developers)

 

Well, to be honest we're loosing potential sim gamers by not broadening and marketing sim games as wide as possible. (like for example, selling it on steam and impulse)

Trust me, kiddy immature arcade racers will spend about 5 minutes (if they even decide to get it to begin with) before they will quit and leave the community. Only those who decide to either better themselves or dedicate themselves to playing a more realistic and skillful game will stay and help the community grow. And there are people like that playing Need for Speed because they dont know any better racing games (all my friends were former NFS players and when i introduced iRacing and rF they immediately jumped ship)

Either way, the more the gaming public is aware of rF2 the better. tbh

 

Lizard has right. Steam is very good medium to advertise a game and could bring new drivers to sim community who are not satisfied with arcade games any more.
However technical reasons, described by Lesiu are very important. rF is used mostly in leagues with defined event calendars, racing for awards etc. It is not playing from time to time So being dependent on secondary service (like Steam) makes some additional risk which shouldn't be accepted.

 

That's a legitimate concern... only that you can also have rF be available outside of steam. A lot of other games do that.

Or you can publish on Impulse. The impulse client is (imho) tons better as it actually doesnt require you to connect to the internet in order for it to work (unlike steam). It also doesnt require you to even have Impulse installed. You only need the Impulse client installing and updating the games. Otherwise the game runs independently (unlike steam which is a really anal client).

http://www.impulsedriven.com/

So the solution to that would be:
1. Have multiple ways of publishing online (You can download it through steam or you can download it from the main site)

2. Just go with Stardock (Impulse).

iRacing is actually not getting as many users as you think. It's popular for a sim. Which isn't a very high standard to measure it by tbh. iRacing would have a lot more users if they published on steam. Although I dont think iRacing should as the constant updating would be irritating on steam.

iRacing is fine the way it is because of it's unique way of updating and delivery (and their site acts like a browser based game).

But rFactor 2 (judging based on rFactor 1 and other ISI games) is an actual traditional client based game. That can definitely work with steam and especially impulse.

Well, hey those kiddies would learn. Think of it as an opportunity to enlighten the kiddies to the error of their ways playing bad games like NFS.

No seriously, the kiddies would actually only last 5 minutes in rF2 (and this in itself means that the developers are already getting money). Trust me, they would just leave rF2 instead of just going around crashing because crashing would be much more spectacular in Need for Speed: Shift.

Secondly, I truly feel you're hurting the sim genre by being so exclusive and developers should atleast try to publish sim games on a popular distribution platform like Steam or Impulse (Impulse is a better distribution but Steam is by far more popular). You're not taking anything away from sim gamers by making it accessible on Steam. You're just expanding the potential audience and tbh, that will always be a good thing.

Having the potential of bringing more open minded racing gamers to rF2 and expanding the (already very small comparatively) sim community is worth the random trolling that you may get from kiddies.

I mean look at Mount & Blade. They are essentially the rFactor of fighting war games. They publish on steam and they get a lot of benefits from steam and people know of M&B now. If they haven't published on steam their audience right now would be tremendously lower (and they would possibly be dead).

For the developers bringing rF2 to as wide of an audience as possible is always better. Sure, kiddies that might come will get annoying... but this is the internet. If they ever do rear their ugly heads here I'd just ignore them and go back to racing among my sim friends. It's that simple and it's a very small sacrifice to make for rF2 to make lotsa money by publishing on steam/impulse.

Impulse wouldn't be a problem (as I've explained above).

But if you were to have rF2 on steam. You can just have it so that if you have a valid cd key (which steam always lets you see it if you bought it from steam) you can download a separate client that's independent from steam. That's not that hard of a fix tbh. But have rF2 available on steam for those (like me) who wants it on steam and for those who are fed up with arcade racers but dont have the initiative to spend time searching for a decent one (because there are a LOT of bad sims out there)

The wider you are marketing your game the better. Again, look at Mount & Blade. If that game wasn't published on steam that game would be dead. And that would be a shame because it's a great mod community based war game where skill is actually required instead of mashing buttons.

Right now, steam or impulse doesn't have a sim alternative to crappy NFS games. Have rF2 be the alternative and I assure you, rF2 would get a lot more attention and paying customers.

 

I agree with you Lizard. I think Steam could be an awesome way to distribute and market the game. Not sure how well the automatic updating would work with the many mods - most people I know have multiple copies of rFactor with different mods installed. But if I remember correctly I read somewhere that the way rF2 will handle mods will be different, so maybe that won't be an issue.

Steam supports offline playing and there is nothing that forces rFactor to use Steamworks way of authentication during game play.

I for one would like the ability to add yet another awesome game to my Steam collection .

 

Right, and for those who dont want to download and use Steam or Impulse, just have a separate option for those who want to download and use the rF2 client independently. Just because you're expanding your distribution methods to include steam and or impulse doesnt mean it has to be the only way

As an avid steam/impulse user (actually all my pc games are either on steam or impulse) i'm very sad that the most realistic racing game I have on both platforms is Need for Speed: Shift. No, seriously, this is an injustice that rF2 can help correct.

I seriously implore the developers to think about it and contact both steam and impulse about getting rF2 distributed through their platforms. It would be so awesome to have rF2 be marketed and distributed on steam

 

Just curious if ISI has given any thought to this?

 

Wouldn't steam b*tch and moan about the integrity of the game cache once we get to the point that we have mods altering base files etc etc? I know even with texture mods in F1 2011 (track livery updates for example) i've had issues where steam decided to re-download content for it because it didn't like the changes made to the files. Since everyones install of rF2 will eventually be quite different from each other due to selection of mods and tracks, steam might be more of a hinderence?

Just a thought, could be wrong of course

 

There is steam which has millions of user but there are also smaller distributors that can help in non english speaking countries. netkar got one for Germany. In Germany gtr2 is still huge. lol. I don't know. I'm sure there are untapped markets out there for ISI.